CHAPTER VIIL 
DROLLEKIES OF THE WOODS. 
THE BLUE JAY. 
Jay ! Jay ! Jay ! Hilloa 1— What's to pay ? What shrill 
clamor breaks upon the silence of the dark woods, like a 
watchman's rattle, sudden on the midnight — Jay ! Ja-a-a-ay ! 
in prolonged and angry shriek answers the alarm, from 
a thicket near at hand. Jay 1 sharp and shrill, takes up the 
cry yet from the distance, until far and wide the woods re- 
echo with the clang of the gathering guardians of the wild ! 
The intruder stands mute in astonishment, at this unlooked- 
for outbreak. They come! they come! They gather yet 
more fiercely about him. See there ! a saucy fellow has de- 
scended, limb by limb, a tree close by, screaming yet louder 
as he comes more near, with crest erect, spread tail, and 
sharp, fierce eyes, and with snapping beak, seems ready to 
devour the unoffending stranger in his wrath. With many 
an antic pirouette, it peers into his face, and turning to its 
noisy fellows, now gathered close behind to back its valorous 
charge, shrieks the report of its inquisition, to urge their 
tardy courage on. 
" What ho ! my friends, am I a robber or a thief!" the be- 
wildered hunter may remonstrate. But the answer is in 
yet fiercer cries, until they dance above his head in a fan- 
tastic ecstasy of fierceness, and yell their deafening gibes 
and taunts into his ears. Patience has bounds : one shot 
